Off to the Deep South

Been travelling down to the States for the past four weeks, and I've stayed down there every other week because the flights coming home are at odd times. It's hard being away from home living out of the suitcase, but it's also been a blessing being able to travel more in parts I have not seen before.

My first weekend I went to New Orleans. It was the last weekend of Mardi Gras and so I decided to go check out what it was all about. I did a little bit of research into what the purpose of Mardi Gras was, and to my surprise it had a religious background. It was first started as a celebration before the season of Lent. So Lent is where you usually give something up as a means of "fasting" for the fourty days before Easter. Well Mardi Gras is a season where they celebrate before the fast. Now, I guess I can't say whether it was like religious personalities who started it, or was a means to get it out of ones system before giving things up.


I kind of feel Mardi Gras gets a bad reputation from all the bad publicity it gets on tv. On TV all you see is yes the parades, but you mostly see the beads and the girls flashing themselves. Yes, that does exist, but there is a lot more to it. It's definately more of a family thing than most people realize, and if you attend the parades, those are very clean for the most part. I found it very fun just seeing all these parades go by me, and see all the effort and themes that these people put into it. There are about 6 parades a day and about 60 floats each. It was crazy how long these parades went on for.



Getting the beads require no luck nor the need to flash to get them. It's definately easier to get them if you are a girl, but it's just as easy being a guy. All you gotta do is stand there, yell for the beads as the parade goes by, and if you really want them, they will be thrown to you. There is more than enough to go around. You gotta keep watching though, because one look away and you might be pegged by a whole bag of beads. I found that perhaps the people on the floats had too many beads or not enough time, because they ended up throwing the whole bag at you instead of single strands. Although not a written goal, generally you want the nice beads. There are too many of the plain small circle beads going around. What you want are the flashy ones, many have flags on them, some have different designs. Though many of those you have to buy, you may be lucky enough to be thrown one from the floats.

Also, each parade celebrates a "krewe" which is sort of like a clan/family. Actually, it's interesting to note how similar it is to the word "crew" which can also have the same meaning I guess. Each parade distributes a doubloon which is a little coin with a symbol on it showing the krewe. I found it the most fun to try and collect these, they are much easier to carry.

Many people asked me whether I found that things were cleaned up after Katrina. I can't say for sure, because my impression of it was that everything was more or less clean. I was told that many parts of where I went was never directly hit with the massive floods you see on tv. But I also cannot be sure that was everywhere I went, because well there is no more water, nor any signs of "this is where the flood hit". What I can say is there are some run down parts that don't look to great, for example there was this hospital I walked past that was on the main street but was completely closed down. So I wonder, was this hospital hit so hard that it had to close? Or was it closed before?


One of the most interesting things I saw was the division between black and white. I get this mostly from the parades. Between each float is generally a school marching band and cheerleaders. I found it great to watch these marching bands because I don't think we have anything of that level in Canada. But what I saw were the bands/cheerleaders were either mostly black or white. Sometimes you saw one or two of the other race, but it was hardly an even distribution. That got me thinking that whether schools in the South (most of the schools were from the South) are that divided.

The second weekend I was down there I went to Florida. I was hoping it would be warmer, but it was generally in the 20-22 degree area. This was warm enough during the day for me to go to the beach. I wasn't prepared to go to the beach, but when I saw it I had to go. Luckily I had my boardies on, but no towel. As I laid on the beach soaking in a little bit of sun, I watched the Gulf of Mexico and the (big enough) waves come in. I stepped into the water to test the temperature, it was what I expected, cold. As I sat down the sand, I wrestled with myself because I wanted to just jump in the water, but it was cold. I went in and came back out at least twice before I finally gave in and just jumped in. Swam out a little and swam back (by little, I mean very little). It was cold, but it was just something I wanted to do. Like I said, no towel, but it did not matter. I quickly gathered my stuff, walked back to the new Pier Park (it's an outside mall, very nice). I walked in the bare feet throughout the whole outside mall because I had sand all over my feet and they were wet. I got a few odd looks, but surprisingly not as many as I'd thought.

City Beach, where I spent a good hour just sitting there. And I went into the frigid Gulf of Mexico here.


Pier Park, walked up and down this strip in bare feet afterwards!

I went to Panama City, this is a city where apparently there is a big spring break crowd. But I was a few weeks early. Nevertheless, I was not the only one of the beach, and it was nice just going there. I stayed at a nice resort while there, gotta be comfortable. The inside pool was so hot you could easily mistake it for a spa. It was easily more hot than the outside temperature. The coast line up at the top of Florida was very nice, almost as nice as the Eastern coastline in Australia. In fact I saw some kite surfers that reminded me of Australia a lot.

This kitesurfing totally reminded me of driving along Oz coast.

I stopped by Pensacola, this is the home of a Naval Air station. I went to the museum there and the planes in there were just amazing. It's home of the bluebirds, the planes that do air shows across North America I guess. But they had a few planes (including the blue bird) for you to get into. The seat is really cramped actually, but really cool to get in.



Bluebird, the cockpit is so small!

So I am working in Mobile, Alabama. And in week three I found out there is this list published a while back named "100 Must Eats in Alabama before you die". So I've been on this mission to try as many of these places as I can, and let me tell you it's been truly delicious. From the brownies that have been made since 1918, to the key lime milkshake in a shop that's been there since the 60s, to the wonderful crab soup with so much crab in it was a meal in itself. The food is so good, and I haven't even had any fried chicken!

This is Royal Red Shrimp. They were good, but I didn't totally enjoy the seasoning.

This is my last trip down here, so about 9 days left, can't wait to try more good eats!.